(CNN) - Mississippi House Speaker Philip Gunn has invited gunmakers such as Colt to relocate to his state from others including Connecticut, where firearms have been a controversial issue since a school shooting there last December left 20 students and six adults dead.

The gun industry in Connecticut is being attacked and "demonized" because of national politics, Gunn said in a letter this week to Colt's Manufacturing Company CEO Dennis Veilleux.

(CNN) - Political risk shouldn't matter one bit when it comes to combating gun violence, Vice President Joe Biden argued Thursday at a conference in Danbury, Connecticut–a city just west of Newtown, where a gunman massacred 20 children and seven adults, including his mother, in December.

As the National Rifle Association continues to beef up its campaign and rhetoric against the Obama administration's gun proposals, Biden warned his colleagues on Capitol Hill not to succumb to the group's power and money.FULL POST

(CNN) - Chris Dodd, chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America and a former U.S. senator, dismissed as "predictable" on Friday the idea that movies play a role in spurring gun violence and instead said the nation's mental health systems should be the subject of attention in the quest to reduce gun deaths.

"It's sort of predictable, in a way, and if you go back over the years, there were people who suggested that comic books were the reason before any of this existed," he said at the National Press Club. "So there's been - if you go back and look at the history, any time one of these things happens, there's kind of a lurching from time to time to suggest that this is the root cause of the problems."FULL POST

Washington (CNN) - President Obama will honor the six teachers and staff killed in the Newtown, Connecticut school massacre last December with the second highest civilian honor, the Citizens Medal in a ceremony next Friday at the White House.

In announcing the honor, the White House said, "the names of six courageous women were forever etched into the heart of our Nation as unthinkable tragedy swept through Newtown, Connecticut."FULL POST

(CNN) - Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy choked up Wednesday when addressing the Newtown elementary school shooting that left 20 students dead, and bluntly rejected the notion of putting more guns in classrooms as protection.

"When it comes to preventing future acts of violence in our schools, let me say this: more guns are not the answer," he said in his state of the state address. "Freedom is not a handgun on the hip of every teacher and security should not mean a guard posted outside every classroom."FULL POST

(CNN) - The former Arizona congresswoman who survived a mass shooting in her district roughly two years ago paid a visit Friday to Newtown, Connecticut, where last month a gunman killed 27 people and himself in one of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history.

Gabrielle Giffords made the trip with her husband, Mark Kelly. The couple met with local and state leaders to discuss gun control legislation, mental health identification and treatment, and "concerns for the erosion of our societal values such that we are increasingly desensitized to violence," according to Newtown First Selectman Pat Llodra.